


someday I'll be a real girl

by kwritten



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Compliant, Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>set during seasons 6 & 7 - Buffy tackles her depression through a series of phone calls to a crisis hotline, but finds that the only person she can really talk to is another Slayer. Buffy/Faith friendship. Some Slayer-angst (per request), but mostly a discussion of depression. This fic doesn't presume that Buffy's depression just disappears at the end of S6, but rather lingers with her through S7 and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someday I'll be a real girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [woobloo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woobloo/gifts).



She learns somewhere between not being dead and her third call to the crisis hotline that recovery is actually ninety percent faking it and ten percent hope. 

_When you’re at ten percent not giving a fuck and ninety percent faking it, that’s still a problem zone. The world could all burn to the ground and you won’t even have enough energy to laugh about it, let alone pretend that it’s a goddamn crisis. Even five percent hope isn’t enough. You have to care enough not just to get the milk out of the fridge for your sister’s breakfast, but also to put it back when she’s not there watching to make sure that you do._

_What if it’s five percent not giving a fuck and five percent wanting to burn the fucker down yourself?_

_I guess self-destruction is better than complete apathy._

_Who are you trying to convince of that, B?_

_I told you not to call me that._

 

Somewhere between her fifth call to the Sunnydale crises hotline and her third call to the cell phone Faith had stashed in her cell somehow (the devil alone knew how she kept the damn thing charged) she remembers that they are supposed to be enemies.

_… or something like that, huh?_

_Have things ever made sense? Like, is this new or is this how it always was?_

_I don’t know, B. For a while there, being the Slayer was a special kind of clarity._

_I wasn’t ready the way you were._

__She inhales and Buffy wonders briefly if Faith has picked up smoking. _No one is ready, B. That’s why it’s a calling. If they asked for volunteers, we’d both have run the fuck the other way._

 

Buffy thinks sometimes that the problem between her and Faith was always that vampires brought chaos to her world, but demons had always existed in Faith’s – like everything that clouded her vision, drove away the storms in her Slayer-sister’s world. Good and evil can be frighteningly simple for someone born into darkness and expected to survive there.

Buffy never allows herself to think back to the girl that she met with fire in her eyes and too much dark eyeliner and too dark lipstick, never allows for a moment the thought to cross her mind, that maybe this sludge she is dragging herself through was always there for Faith. That maybe this distant curiosity she feels, grasping at the world yet feeling it slip through her fingers, nothing quite touching her heart the way she knows it ought to, that maybe this feeling is all too new for her, but has been ever-present for the voice on the other side of the line.

She never, ever wonders if blood will shock her into clarity. She throws herself into patrolling, half-hoping, half-wishing that something will spark a response. She never, ever wonders if innocent blood on her hands will help her to feel.

(She’s seen first-hand that it won’t. She knows that it’ll only drag her somewhere she will never escape from. She picks up the phone because she needs the reminder.)

 

_I need to stop._

_Stop then._

_But I need this._

_This phone call? Or the sex with your vampire sex toy? Or the whiskey you keep in your bedside table?_

_\--Faith…_

_Or the stake you keep in your jacket pocket?_

_Can’t you--?_

_What? Take over Slayer Central while you take a vacation? Sure. You really want me to?_

_I couldn’t explain._

_I could kidnap you. Just Thelma and Louise right the fuck out of Sunnydale._

 

 

In her twentieth phone call to the crisis hotline, Buffy admits that the only time she ever truly laughs anymore is when she is talking to her archenemies. The calm voice on the other end of the line asks her if these people really are her enemies, or if she has always pushed them away because they reminded her of things she didn’t like about herself.

She laughs so hard a supervisor at the hotline comes onto the call and asks her if she needs an ambulance, if she’s having an anxiety attack, if there’s anyone they need to call.

All she can choke out is, “Isn’t that what an enemy is?”

 

 

Sometime between her tenth call to Faith and the thirtieth time she pulls Spike between her legs, Dawn finds her on the floor of the kitchen with a half-empty bag of baby carrots in her hand and tears rolling down her face.

_How many of them did you eat before she found you?_

_Maybe a pound._

_Jesus, B._

_Gee Suss Bee. Sounds like a 70’s band._

_Why were… What did you tell your mini-me?_

_I told her I had a sudden craving for carrots. And then she got out the ranch dipping sauce she had hidden behind the expired milk and joined me on the floor._

_What did you tell her about you crying?_

_I threw up. All those carrots went to waste._

_B, I think you need to start calling someone more official. I don’t think I’m equipped to deal with midnight carrot snacking fiascos._

_I told her I miss mom._

_Was that true?_

_Is anything true about me anymore?_

_I think it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not… all that matters is what you believe._

_Well then it wasn’t true._

_I think that’s okay, too._

 

 

Somewhere between breaking it off with Spike and falling apart in Tara’s lap (or do those two events happen the other direction? Time seems to do laps without her noticing these days) she discovers the word ‘self-harm’ and finds a stack of books in the basement her mom bought after Dawn’s one existential event with a knife the year before. _What to do if your Teen is Cutting_ and _Parents of Teens Who Cut: Dealing with Self-Harm_ wedged right next to _Angry Teens: Conversation Starters_ and _What to Say When Your Teen Comes Out: Parents of Gay Teens Speak Out_ (she recalls Joyce’s welcoming and over-bright first meeting of Tara and wishes – not for the first time – that she could cry at least for this, at least cry to mourn her mother, but the tears just don’t come). She devours the books in one night, but can’t face searching through the other books, can’t uncover more of the words and titles that accompanied her mother at night through the years. 

 

_I stopped._

_Stopped fucking the vampire?_

_Mm…._

_That’s too bad. He was hot, from what I remember._

_He’s gross._

_Gross hot?_

_He’s gross because he’s Spike. He’s hot because… oh the things he can do with his fingers._

_Damn girl, why’d you cut him loose again?_

_Because it was wrong!_

 

 

Sometime between almost dying and surviving and almost dying again and crawling up out of the dirt again to find the world full of light, Buffy finds herself having to leave reminders to fake it.

 

_It almost feels real now._

_Fake it ‘till you make it._

_How do you make it?_

_I don’t fake it, that’s for sure. When shit’s for shit I have to remind myself of that._

_You could leave, you could come back home._

_You don’t actually mean that._

_Not really… but maybe… I don’t know._

_I’ll come when I need to for me, not when you need me for you._

_Would you have come last year, if I had asked?_

_I almost came when Wes called to say you were alive. I stared at the fence for three days straight, thinking about how I could jump right over it and they’d never have a chance._

_Why didn’t you?_

_You called._

_Oh…_

_You called._ Faith sighs on the other end of the line, like she’s been avoiding saying this for a very long time. _You called and you needed me here, as far away from your downward spiral as possible. Like Spike, hiding out in his crypt, you didn’t want anyone to see it, see how much the darkness was taking hold._

_You talk like a Watcher sometimes._

_You aren’t the only one who calls me looking for someone to be witness to things they’d rather not expose others to._

_I’m sorry, Faith._

__There’s no bitterness in Faith’s dry laugh, _No you’re not. And I’m not. I’m where I’m supposed to be for now._

_On the other end of the line._

_Five by five, B._

 

Sometime between losing Tara and finding her will to live again, sometime after waking to the light and dragging Dawn into it with her, sometime after hurting Spike and being hurt by him, sometime after things go back to normal, she still walks alone in the dark with her stake in her pocket instead of in her hand, daring the darkness to take her once and for all.

She asks the pleasant person on the other end of the line if it will ever go away, this restless feeling that she’s still just faking it until it becomes real. 

She is given a list of numbers for clinics to call and a rehearsed statement about medications and brain chemistry.

She hangs up.

 

 

_I probably won’t call them again._

_You say that every time._

_I don’t need to call them again._

_You’re still calling me._

_Well… yeah... because…_

_You don’t owe me anything, B._

_I know that._

_You know that, but you don’t._

_You are supposed to be my enemy._

_No, I’m not supposed to exist at the same time as you. We aren’t enemies, we’re just too much the same._

_We should have been friends._

_There are things we need more than friends sometimes._

 

 

Sometime between getting too caught up in the day-to-day of fighting a war and Faith breezing back into town, Buffy realizes that sometimes the threat of losing the world is all you need to notch up that ten-percent hope into twenty-percent. And maybe there’s only the most minimal difference between wanting to give up and keeping yourself going.

 

_So you’re out._

_I’m here anyway._

_Because you needed it?_

_Because I was ready for the world to need me._

_Mm…_

_Just like you, I expect._

_Just like me._

_Don’t make me regret coming back._

_Always._

 

 

Sometime after finding comfort and losing it, sometime between losing the world and saving it again, she learned how to smile again and this time it felt real. 

The calm voice on the other end of the line asked her why it only felt real now. “ _Because I’m ready for the world to_ not _need me_ ,” and as she said it, she realized it sounded more suicidal than hopeful – she’s read all the books and she knows all the signs. But when she hangs up the phone and opens the door, stepping outside into the twilight with her stake firm and solid in her hand, she is smiling.

 

 

_You don’t have to go._

_It’s time for me to learn how to be a real girl again._

_We’ll miss you._

_You won’t. I’m a world of trouble._

_You’re part of the world, and the world is always going to be trouble whether you’re in it or not._

_I have to do this on my own terms._

_Come back sometime._

_I will…_

_What?_

_What’s the secret key, B?_

_I guess… Knowing that…_

_Knowing that there isn’t one._

_That, too._

_If there’s an apocalypse, I got your back._

_I’ll kill you if you don’t._

_I love you, B._

_Get the hell out of here._

 

 

Maybe someday, she’ll feel like the recovery part is over (though she doubts it) and she’ll go back to being a real girl with all her parts in working order.

 

 

_Have I told you that all truck stops smell like piss?_

_Every time you call._

_Well they ALL smell like fucking piss._

_And vinegar?_

_Don’t get cute._

_I’ve always been the cuter one._

_As long as we agree that I’m hotter._

_Well I have better hair._

_It gets better, right?_

_Your hair? Only if you start following that conditioning regiment I showed you._

_Everything._

_Nothing really gets better, it just gets easier to cope… I guess._

_I thought I learned everything I needed to know behind bars._

_You were just getting started._

_I’m not putting avocado in my hair._

_Fine, what do I know?_

 

 

 

Sometime between dying and blowing a giant crater into the Southern California landscape, she learns that recovery is ninety percent faking it and ten percent being okay with not being okay. 

 

And right now, that’s enough.


End file.
